China's ASBMs vs America's Interceptors

Reprinted With Permission of Real Clear DefenseCan China's anti-ship ballistic missile really hit an American aircraft carrier zigzagging at 30 knots in the Taiwan Strait? That remains unclear as there is no record of China successfully testing its growing suite of "carrier killer" missiles on a moving target at sea. This uncertainty leaves the door open to the possibility that Beijing's ASBM hype is merely a Sun Tzu ruse to prod America into spending countless billions on new weapons to defend against a chimera. Ruse or not, the theoretical beauty of China's ASBM lies in at least three dimensions:

A relatively low "asymmetric warfare" cost to the carriers it targets

An ability to "outrange" America's carriers with their current air wings

Mach 10 speed, verticality, and maneuverability as it approaches its target

In reality, there are four basic ways to neutralize China's ASBM threat, and these "four corners" of an American ASBM defense are not mutually exclusive. Strategy #1: Interceptor MissilesThe US and its allies have been rapidly moving ahead in the development of interceptor missiles. Some poster children for the interceptor missile response are growing up in the "Standard Missile" series being fathered by Raytheon. For example, the SM-3 is geared towards "mid-course defense" - hitting an ASBM early in its trajectory at longer distances and higher altitudes and possibly even in space. In contrast, the SM-6 Dual specializes more in "terminal defense" should an ASBM break through the SM-3 perimeter - and it is equally potent against incoming cruise missiles.While each of these missiles have been successfully tested against isolated missile threats, the Achilles Heel of a missile interceptor strategy is its possible inability to counter the kinds of swarming cruise and ballistic missile attacks that China's Second Artillery Corps is likely to launch. Such "salvoing" does indeed present both economic and operational problems.Economically, missile interceptor missiles are costly, e.g., about $10 million a pop for the SM-3 and $4 million for the SM-6. Operationally, the question arises to whether you can even fit enough missiles into a strike group's magazines to shoot down all of the missiles in repeated Chinese swarms - much less fire these missile interceptors fast enough to prevent a mission kill.Strategy #2: Outranging China's Carrier KillerIn a seminal report published by the Center for a New American Security in October of 2015, Dr. Jerry Hendrix documented the deadly decline in the range of American aircraft carrier strike groups since the end of World War II. The problem here is not with the carriers themselves but rather with their air wings, which now feature shorter-range fighters.To see the historical problem framed by Hendrix, consider that the average unrefueled combat range of an American carrier has shrunk from over 1,200 nautical miles in 1958 and over 900 nautical miles in 1986 to less than 500 nautical miles today. In contrast, the range of China's DF21-D antiship ballistic missile is between 800 and 1,000 nautical miles.The obvious strategy here to save aircraft carriers as a viable fighting platform is to focus once again on range. To Hendrix, one way to work this problem is to develop "a new long-range, deep strike asset in line with the A-3 Skywarrior and A-6 Intruder of the past that could take off from a carrier, fly more than 1,500 nm, penetrate a dense anti-air network of sensors and missiles, deliver multiple weapons on target, and then return to the carrier." In Hendrix's vision, the most logical means to do this is through "an unmanned platform" along the lines of the X-47B that was cancelled in 2006. The plane remains on life support as a test vehicle that has successfully completed carrier landings, but it is literally "waiting in the wings."